Ever Since He Could Remember
by warwick-witch
Summary: Seeing his name appear on the dagger made his heart stop. The wave of magic poured over him within moments and his body was soon caught in a whirlwind of contradictions. He could feel the magic thrive with each of the lives he took. One-shot.


_A/N: I wrote this after I saw _Skin Deep_ and I intended it to be a prologue to a longer story focused on the curse and, in general, the nature of magic in the show. _

_I wasn't really going to publish it until I saw the sneak-peek image from episode 19 (being inspired by sneak-peeks seems to be my thing now). I am curious if with this fic I was actually able to at least partially foresee what would happen in the episode. (like I did with _He Should Not Have Caught Her_ and _Skin Deep_)._

* * *

Ever Since He Could Remember

Seeing his name appear on the dagger made his heart stop. The wave of magic poured over him within moments and his body was soon caught in a whirlwind of contradictions. His skin burned with infernal fire and the blood in his veins turned into ice. He was deaf and blind, the weight of his numb body dragging him down to the bottom of the black sea. A scream was piercing through his skull, and he could see the whole world at once. He was alive and dead and neither. It took less than a heartbeat for the magic to overtake him but to him it lasted a thousand years. The pain was excruciating. He was certain the nausea would turn him inside out and the fever will turn him into ashes.

When his body finally stopped fighting it and became one with the magic, like a bad dream, the memory of his suffering disappeared. As a woman in childbirth forgets about her discomfort upon taking her newborn in her arms and nursing it for the first time, he regained his strength with the first blood he spilt. He could feel the magic thrive with each of the lives he took.

* * *

_Kiss. My. Boot. – What is it that you called me? – I am the Dark One!_

The magic was singing in his blood. He saw the man before him open his mouth but there was no sound coming from it, even though his face was grimaced in great pain. All that mattered was the power that he had, the fear he had seen in those soldiers' eyes. He had never felt so accomplished in his life before, so strong, so fearless. Their lives were worthless and he wanted more. He wanted to kill. To see fear in his victims' eyes, he wanted them to beg him for mercy and deny it to them. Because he could.

_Papa_…

There was not just him and the magic in the field, there was someone else. It took some time before the magic fell silent and let him hear the words that seemed to be coming from very far away, muffled and misshaped.

_Papa? What happened to you?_

He turned around and saw a child looking at him. The boys eyes were wide with horror and he found it strange that that sigh did not please him. Fear pleased him ever since he could remember.

"Papa? What happened to you?"

_What happened to me?_

He took one look at the boy and he remembered. They wanted to take away what was his and he killed them so he could keep it. Now it was safe.

* * *

Baelfire did not say a word to him the whole way home and he would not look at him either. It would have been easy to use the magic he now carried in himself to find out what he was thinking but it seemed wasteful to use his powers on something so trivial as learning the reason behind the behavior of a fourteen-year-old. Instead, he preferred to think that the boy was proud of him and that he felt intimidated by the grandeur of his recent deed. The boy owed him his life now. To hell with the beggar! He _owed_ the child, son or not. It was his and no one would ever take it away from him. And if anybody tries as much as to question this, he will make them pay.

* * *

It was happening again, the magic was drunk with blood and it was making him think that there were just the two of them in the hut. But it was not so. He looked around and saw the boy standing in front of him with blood coming from his mouth and red spots on his shirt.

And then he remembered although he had to try very hard to pull the memory from the depths of his mind.

* * *

"_Baelfire, dearie, whatever is bothering you, sure you can tell your father. You haven't said a word to me all day."_

"_You are not my father!"_

"_Now, my boy, how can you say that?"_

"_My father was a good man! And you… I don't even know what you are!"_

"_I saved you, did I not? Now we can be together, don't you understand that? They would have taken you away from me."_

"_You didn't do it for me, you did it for you!"_

"_You would have died, you foolish little child…"_

"_And I would rather have died protecting the village I love and showing my father that he didn't have to run and be afraid any more than be a coward all my life like you!"_

* * *

He could not remember the moment he had hit the boy or whether the boy had cried or not. The one thing that he could not forget was the feeling of magic rushing through his veins as it sensed the blood. He saw it, he could taste it in the air, he could _hear it_.

There was no fear in the boy's eyes, and that was new to him because, ever since he could remember, he'd brought fear into people's eyes. And they would beg him for mercy and he would always refuse it to them. He had power. He was power. He could see through time He could turn castles into rumble with a snap of his fingers. And yet there was no fear in the boy's eyes.

Baelfire stormed out of the cottage and slammed the door behind him before he could stop him, or because he _would not_ stop him.

Of course he _could_ stop him, if he wanted to, he could have bolted the door before the boy even thought about running, he could have seized him the moment he turned to run. But he would not.

_You didn't do it for me, you did it for you!_

Of course he did it for himself. That was what he always did. Ever since he could remember.


End file.
